- Timing. When does your audience want to hear from you?
- Frequency. How often do they want to hear from you?
There’s an art to this and it makes a huge difference to how your content is received. The secret is that it’s not up to you. Again, it’s about your audience.
Timing
Good content is not just about what you create—it’s also about when you deliver it. The right information, delivered at the right time, is powerful. The opposite is true, too. Trying to connect at the wrong time will yield weak results and may actually damage the authority that you are trying to build.
This goes for any type of content. You can probably think of a time when you’ve read a book, listened to music, or watched a movie—one that you knew that everyone liked—and you were just not into it. Maybe your instincts were correct and it really wasn’t for you. But, what about those times when you came back to it a few years later, in a different state of mind, and you enjoyed it?
The differentiating factor? Timing. What hit the wrong note yesterday is suddenly compelling today.
Timing is everything. It’s a cliché for a reason. Your audience has to be in the right state of mind to connect with you. The frustrating part is that it’s not up to you to decide when that happens. You don’t get a say in it. Your audience calls the shots.
How do you know when and how often your audience wants to hear from you? If you’re just starting, you probably don’t. So, you experiment. Try launching pieces at different times. When do you get the most engagement? When are the “dead zones?”
There is a lot of research about the best time to post to social channels. These suggestions can serve as a good set of guidelines. But, you will begin to find your own optimal times as you engage with your audience.
Of course, if you have developed a nice, bi-directional connection with your core audience, you can always ask your readers directly about their preferences.
Frequency
There’s one simple rule here—exercise restraint. With every piece of content you share, you are developing your brand. Social media provides an unfettered platform, but some people treat that as challenge to pump out as much content as they can. No thought goes unexpressed.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Post too much and you will actually start to disadvantage your content. It becomes noise. Noise won’t get you noticed—even if it’s really good content.
You’ll have to find the rate and frequency that works for you. Again, you’re writing for your audience, not yourself. Try different strategies, but settle on something that works for your readers, not you. It will build trust, reliability, and strengthen your connection to your audience.
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Timing and frequency are an important part of your overall content strategy. Have a plan. Build your authority by being reliable.
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For more about Content Strategy for Authors, please see the “For Authors” section of this site—or follow along with the Glass Box Project, as I write my own book “in the open” to model the process for you.
For more about Content Strategy for Entrepreneurs, please see the “For Entrepreneurs” section.
Photo credit: “Orange” by Mikael Tigerström is licensed under CC BY 2.0.